Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Not rich, football.

Harvard and Yale are rich. Some football powerhouses are state schools.

Oh they are very wealthy. Southern white people love them some football. Heisman trophies bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to the school. Their money is just as green as the Ivy League.

Paged!



That Speedy, the mascot of the fighting geoducks of Evergreen State College WA. The Evergreen State College is neither rich nor football.

Yes, any football powerhouse has to be wealthy.

But I would bet that the total endowments of the ivys are greater than the total endowments of the California university systems.

If not just toss MIT into the mix....

the endowment money doesn't matter worth a damn any more. Its the apparel/uniform contracts with Nike, the broadcast deals for conferences with NBC/Fox/ABC, and the NILs from businesses owned by alumni to the players.

The money for the actual "school" is now not even secondary, its the mopped up droppings on the floor from the big players.

I see your Hawaiian pasta and raise you

Looks like ole Elon is giving up his doomed legal battle and moving forward with his poorly planned Twitter purchase. Saw that coming.

Trigger warning:

Politics involved but its REALLY funny.

I did run it by a mod.

Edit: I suppose I should dedicate it to the memory of Fone.

Majority of videos on XI in YouTube are retrospective or nostalgia goggles garbage. Almost all of them give misinformation and dismiss it. Annoying... also I decided to replay RE3 and Nemesis keeps killing me on hard mode, I forgot how frustrating the first two fights were. It's weird how most old gamed have a lot of players doing let's plays or speed runs and XI just gets dumb nostalgia goggles videos.

True, but there's at least one Twitch streamer in the midst of a let's play that is going on YouTube if you want to check him out. 4-8 Live has been doing all of the Final Fantasies in order and hit XI recently. He is trying it solo with minimal help and thus has a lot of understandable noob moments, but I have found it interesting to see both the positive and negative opinions on FFXI from the perspective of someone with almost no MMO experience.

Chucky Season 2 premiers tonight

I tried watching this guy live and it made me really, really mad. He doesn't follow guides or even listen to NPCs, and he certainly doesn't want chat backseat-gaming. When I tried watching, he was just wandering around with no idea what his goals even were, complaining endlessly about every little thing. XI's entire theme is community and helping each other out, you literally cannot do this without some kind of guidance.

I've seen a lot of people trying XI for the first time, some going in with more of an open mind than others. But the one consistency is the chat. When the streamer is new to XI, chat thumps XIV hard. But it's funny to see that gradually drop off as the thumpers either give up or finally start wrapping their heads around the game.
"Why aren't you playing a real game like XIV?"
"Eew, that's what Roegadyn look like in XI? Gross rat people?"
"I thought this game was shut down"
(Streamer dies) "Well you gave it a shot. Time to install XIV"
"I cried. Literally CRIED at the story in XIV"

Like, shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup

I've just been informed by an Italian on Youtube that Super Mario's name is pronounced with an "air" sound instead of an "are" sound and now nothing makes sense in this world anymore.

His brother disagrees.

Just tell them that you have no interest in playing a wow clone.

The only thing that ever interested me about 14 was that they did a lot of callbacks to older FF titles. I saw some video where a group was battling the Ghost Train from 6. However, Sabin did not come out to suplex the train so that is a big lose in my book.

I'm still waiting for a Buster Sword lockstyle in 11 though. Maybe one day. Just as long as they don't gate it behind the mog bonanza.

I haven’t noticed a whole lot of XIV talk in the let’s play other than pointing out that the two games are very different in presentation. But yeah, his approach to every other gave in the series has been no backseating, because the entire idea is to experience it “fresh” because not every person who plays a game has a chat full of veterans telling them exactly what to do. And over time he’s liking it more and more, but let’s face it. FFXI is not friendly to new players and there are some very valid complaints about that aspect.

His thankfully didn't have a ton of Thumpers.

XI is far from perfect. There's a lot of bugs and oversights, a lot of design decisions I'd disagree with, etc. I don't like that the game just feeds you intro cutscenes for every storyline long before you plan on starting them. It's confusing, halts your progress, and you forget what happened by the time you do want to start on it. I was watching another new streamer play it the other day and he got up to the Dark Dragon fight, where he was Drawn-In and didn't know he could unlock his camera, so he couldn't attack it and died. It's jank as heck lol

I don't mind when people point out actual, objective issues in XI. What I find exhausting though is when people suddenly become an authority on a game they've never played.

Or when a design decision that makes the game outstanding is criticized as not being like XIV. Heaven forbid XI automate the GCD system, or make building a party a manual task. How dare an NPC describe a landmark instead of just having you follow a GPS. What an outdated concept having to manage MP and enmity. Thank the Almighty Yoshi-P for learning from the neanderthals that developed XI.

I mean, I play both XI and XIV and enjoy them both, but yeah. Some of XI’s issues are completely unnecessary and should have been fixed eons ago, but others are in the category of what I would call “pros that come with cons”. For example, FFXI’s jobs are often very distinct and bloated with tons of abilities and skills which gives every job a unique identity, leading to fights that can be very dynamic. This comes paired with horrible game balance. FFXIV, on the other hand, is constantly tuning itself for balance in endgame content but most jobs come with strict rotations and fights are often more memorization tests than anything else. It’s very hard to have your cake and eat it too.

Exactly. And that's why I've always said it's all very subjective and that both games can thrive concurrently because they appeal to different people.

I acknowledge FFXI's issues, but I look past them because I prefer how it plays. I'll even concede there are things that I prefer about XIV than XI, such as the visual aesthetic of Red Mage holding their sword as a fencer, and allowing Bards to actually play real music.

I honestly wouldn't even care about XIV existing if I could just escape it. But anywhere I go, even on FFXI forums and FFXI streams and FFXI videos and stuff, the cult is always there making sure to remind everyone of the free trial, which includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn AND the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime.

Like, dude, stahp. Let me enjoy my game where Thief and Blue Mage are real, playable jobs.

That cult is literally everywhere, its so weird.

ETNZ, while also defending The Cup, is working on two side projects with Toyota related to their tech development: First, the hydrogen cell driven chase boats for AC37 in Barcelona, as one of the stipulations of the Deed of Record for that competition is that all support vehicles be carbon-neutral; and second, an attempt to break the land speed record for wind-based propulsion. Here's some video of their first test on the Salt Flats at Lake Gairdner in South Australia.

As this trip is already a failure, ive decided to end it eating a big sized syrian libanese sandwitch kinda popular here, called beirute.

I ate more than i should, but i dont care anymore. Eating is the only thing worthwhile in this trip.

Land sped records require a 2 way trip within a certain timeframe. I do hope they have a second outrigger.

Also I would be surprised if the current record wasn't set on ice.

That's super cool. And it reminds me of this other neat land-speed record that was just set by a company I watch. Fastest 100-metre dash by a bipedal robot~

XI's problem a lot of the time is almost no direction with quests. Not just the small quests either.

For example, Dragoon AF Helmet quest. You get pretty straight forward direction from the NPCs on it all the way up until you get the Challenge for The Royal Knights key item. Then you talk to Balasiel, and he's like, "Your Wyvern will be able to sense their taint."

But no mention of going to Temple of Uggalepih directly. Just a second talk with Rahal, no cutscene, where he says, "The writer of the challenge is in the south, dabbling in the dark arts."

*In the south*

South of Quon? South of Mindartia? As far south as you can go on the regional map? Technically Elshimo and Kuzotz are tied for as far south as you can go so...

But I will say I do prefer a world like XI's where even though I basically need a guide for every quest, the quests are never just annoying in my face for 5 minutes affairs. They're how you get to know NPCs in the game, and the NPC recur throughout other questlines.

For example: Brugaire is involved in the DRG AF quests a lot. He also pops up at the end of Spiral Hell WSNM though.

There's always pros and cons with every game out there. XI's just break most people.

I'm pretty sure most players of XI are broken in some form or another.